Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), more colloquially known as electric shock treatment, finds use in modern psychiatry for patients suffering from severe depression or melancholia. A description of the indications for ECT as well as present techniques appears in the booklet Thymatron.TM. Instruction Manual by Richard Abrams, M.D., and Conrad Swartz, Ph.D., M.D., (May 1985), published by Somatics, Inc., 910 Sherwood Drive, Unit 18, Lake Bluff, Ill. 60044, and the references cited there.
During ECT, the patient remains under anesthesia. Accordingly, he may exhibit no physical movement during the seizure induced by the ECT. Accordingly, the physician should follow the course of treatment through information provided by an electroencephalogram (EEG) taken during treatment.
The ECT, to produce the required therapeutic effect, should generally produce a seizure which lasts at least 25 seconds. If the seizure lasts less than this time, the physician often repeats the ECT with a larger electrical dosage to achieve the therapeutic benefit for the patient.
The EEGs currently in use provide a readout of the patient's brain activity drawn by a line on a strip of paper. To obtain this information, the physician must direct and keep his attention to the recoder producing the graph. To the extent that he does so, he can not devote his undivided attention to the patient undergoing the ECT or to his vital signs. Also, only one person can usually review the graph.
Additionally, the mechanism for driving the paper becomes subject to the normal wear and tear through time. It may, in fact, prove unworkable when actually needed during ECT.
Furthermore, the equipment utilizes electroencephalograph paper. This of course, must undergo replacement at regular, frequent intervals.
Also, interpreting the paper EEG record requires substantial sophistication and technical expertise. Moreover, it requires time to study the graph in order to arrive at a determination as to the effectiveness of the ECT.